On New Years Day..

‘Tis traditional to make some resolutions, so here goes:

In 2008 I resolve…

…to Blog less and live more.

…to achieve a better balance in my life.

…to do less at church.

…to get the ball in more often.

…to do better.

…to be happy.

…to be me.

I hope that God exists, I hope I pray

Still looking at hope in BCLC. I am struggling a bit with getting into the subject and I had so much else to do yesterday that I couldn’t get into the activity either. Roll on January.

So I will have to tell you about something else that I saw that made me think a lot this weekend. I watched Russell Brand on the Road, a film about him and his mate retracing a journey made by Jack Kerouac 50 years before and immortalised in his book On the Road. I didn’t watch it all, I do intend to but it was on too late. I do find Brand to be quite an interesting character though, he has been through a lot in his years and speaks informatively (and wittily) on a number of subjects.

In the film he mentioned something about someone being on a quest for God. I presumed he meant a quest to find God as oppose to a quest on God’s behalf. This made me ponder whether we are all on some sort of ‘quest for God’ but we are all looking in different places.

Ultimately, i would say that most mot people are seeking some sort of fulfillment to their lives, some sort of happiness. They look for this in any number of places – work, home, sport, friendships – and believe they have found it in a number of ways – recognition and money, comfort, achievement – all very positive things. Other people believe they are completed in more negative ways, through drugs, drink or exerting power over those they perceive to be weaker than they are.

Christians, traditionally, profess to find themselves in their worship and service. I am not convinced. Yes there can be something of an uplifting, a spritual if you like, experience that can be had in some of the elements of an act of worship (very few and far between in my experience) and would not admit to finding something of that in their everyday lives.

I am now starting to think that God can only truly be found in the everyday things of life. The joy an fulfillment of having ones life in balance must be, to me, ‘finding God’.

The ‘worship’, certainly that which we practice at BCLC, enables us to find that balance. To put our lives into context and perspective and establish who we are and where we belong. As I have discussed before, our identity is in the balance of our activities and our relationships, I am no more a ‘christian’ than I am a ‘father’ or a ‘friend’ or a ‘youth worker’ or a ‘tennis player’ – all those things, and more make me me and the balance of them all is the key to fulfillment and happiness.

Is that not where we find God?

Oh Carol

I heard this today http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/today/listenagain/ram/today4_carol_20071217.ram

Honestly, could there be a more desperately poor attampt to re-interest people in something?

Return to Sender

I received this twice in the past couple of days:

Royal Mail has traditionally alternated between sacred and secular designs for their Christmas stamps and this year it is the turn for a religious image. Royal Mail has issued two sets of designs this year. The main set of designs, available in all the main denominations is of angels, which is vaguely Christian but not explicitly so and certainly not specifically Christmassy. They have also issued a ‘Madonna and Child’ design for first and second class only. Post Office staff have been instructed to only sell this design if people specifically request it, but obviously people can’t request it if they don’t know it exists! If people don’t buy these stamps, Royal Mail will claim there is no demand for religious Christmas stamps and not produce them in future. Please therefore ask for ‘Madonna and Child’ stamps when you do your Christmas posting and also tell your friends, contacts etc. to do the same. Thank You.

My first reaction to something like this is, ’so what?’. My second reaction to things like this is ’so what?’.

This is in conjunction with an article in our church magazine urging us christian types to reclaim christmas (for God and for Harry?). Reclaim it from whom? I don’t want to go into the whole history of how it was nicked by christians from pagan festivals of light, but some of that is so entwined with our rather confused festival that it is difficult not to.

Surely the moment a church puts up a christmas tree it is buying into the idea that this festival is more than a celebration of the birth of christ?

We really can’t have it both ways, this is, at best, a mixed – secular and spiritual – celebration, at worst a big party that most christians are happy to indebt themselves to. It seems a bit rich to me to then cry foul when the post office won’t be a bit more sympathetic to our fragile sensibilities.

The more important questions we should be asking is why has one of our main festivals become so secular? What are people looking for at christmas? I know that the christian story is a good one to tell and never more so than at christmas, so why does no one want to hear it?

I hate talk of reclamation, you cannot go backwards, only forwards. There is a new reality out there that churches and the people within had better get to grips with or they will be going the way of the religious stamps, an idle curiosity to wierdos and philatelists (tortologous? – no offence).

No hope no harm, just another false alarm

We were in Big church yesterday. The theme for the month is ‘hope’. This is to coincide with the Hope 08 intiative.

I don’t have anything against things like Hope 08, I don’t really have very much against big church, whatever floats your boat and all that. The problem I have is with the complacency that can sometimes accompany them both.

I was discussing yesterday’s worship with my good lady at home yesterday and I pointed out where I thought the major difference between BCLC and BC was. At one point in the service the issue of people getting into debt around Christmas came up. This is a real issue for a lot of families at this time of year, people get carried away with the festivities and before they know where they are they have a massive credit card debt to pay off in January. It happens to us. Now if we had brought that up on a normal Sunday we would have had something of a discussion about it and looked closely at how we behaved and whether that measured up with our ideals. It’s easier to ignore those awkward questions when, to be frank, you don’t actually have to answer them.

I hope that ‘Hope 08′ will allow people to engage with the issues they are trying to tackle in a way that, perhaps, previous ‘programmes’ have failed to do.

This is not my expectation though.

My expectation is that churches that are already active on their communities will become more so. The churches that currently struggle to to ‘find their mission’ will continue to do so.

There is a tendency in churches to hope that the ‘next big thing’ will trigger some sort of revival of their fortunes and return us all to some cosy bygone time where the churches were full and kids kept their hoods off so the local bobby could clip their ear for them.

This isn’t going to happen. People need to develop their faith and allow that to inform their actions, this in turn will bring about some changes in the way members of our society conduct themselves towards one another.

The ancient out-dated model of church that we continue to hang on to will not deliver that, it allows us to remove ourselves sufficiently from the hard truths that we must confront if we are goine to effect any real change both in ourselves and in those around us.